Het Tikawala's Key Ideas from The Lean Startup
by Eric Ries

MVP stands for minimum viable product. To test your product in the market for the very first time you need to build a basic prototype of your product incorporated with needful and USP features.

One has to make an MVP first and continuously innovate through early feedback to make a final product that can be released into the market as a flagship product.

The engines of growth are used to grow your startup using one or more of the three growth engines to retain customers in the long run.

The three growth engines are:

1. Sticky
2. Viral
3. Paid

If you get a lot of customers but a large chunk of them churn, then the engine is not working and you need to switch it.

This makes the customers stick to the product and the customers generally don't leave until dissatisfied.

WiFi providers use this engine to retain customers.

This engine focuses on "person-to-person" transmission as a consequence of normal product use. In this engine, the customers do not have to consciously spread the word for the product, instead in their normal use, they unknowingly market the product.

Hotmail used this engine of growth.

This engine considers spending tonnes of money on acquiring customers for the long term. This engine makes the customer habituated to the product and once they have developed a taste of the product, they cannot go back. The cost involved in acquiring a customer is also known as CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).

In this engine of growth, the companies spend millions of dollars giving freebies to new customers to habituate them to the product.

Companies like Swiggy, Zomato, and Ola in India used paid growth engine to make customers for themselves. In the initial cash drain phase, they gave freebies and in the control phase, they stopped giving discounts and used their data to attract them again to the product. They took charge of the customers as it became impossible for them to turn back.

One major deciding factor for a successful startup is pivoting at the right time. Startups use the build-measure-learn loop to walk toward their goal. But if they keep continuing and every time the market turned down the product, then the startup should try to pivot and take a new path with the MVP.